By Leah Luzhansky
Every year students are given multiple tests. They are also given nationwide and state tests from the administrators and School Board, which allow you to go onto the next grade or get held back. Because of this I believe the School Board, administrators and teachers add more stress to the lives of students than is needed. With all the homework and activities students are involved in, it would be hard not to get stressed. But tests just add more stress.
Yes, I understand tests are needed to help teachers see what students have learned, but the amount of tests and quizzes that are given a year, and the impact they have on school, is more than students can handle. I realize and understand why teachers want tests, because when it comes to homework, students aren’t very truthful and sometimes don’t even care about it. Students may cheat off other people’s homework, may randomly write something in if it is only graded on completion, or may just decide to skip it all together if the homework isn’t worth that many points, causing the student not to learn anything.
For teachers, tests are a way to make sure students are learning what they should be and are receiving the grade they deserve. But tests and quizzes make up a large part of your grade, and because of this, students are compelled to study harder and stay up longer, so the material gets into their heads before the test. But, the day of the test arrives and students become nervous and begin worrying if they will fail or not, and begin forgetting things they may have otherwise known.
When it comes to standardized testing, students work even harder than they would have otherwise, because of the impact it has on your school career. Standardized testing affects what classes you will be in (enriched or non-enriched), whether you get to move on to the next grade, whether you get to graduate from high school, etc. Parents will also want to sometimes study with their kids, for standardized tests, pushing more information onto them than they can handle, and this adds even more stress. And when a bad grade on a test or report card is seen, parents push their kids to work even harder to get a better grade and push them over the limit, which builds up the stress, eventually causing the kids to break down and they begin doing worse in school.
What is worse about standardized tests is you never know what will be on them. Unlike school tests where you are tested on what you have been learning, standardized tests combine everything and sometimes even include stuff you don’t know how to do. Because of this if there is something you don’t know how to do on the test, you begin worrying and this worry stays with you the full length of the test and the worry builds up. It eventually turns to stress which causes even more problems for you.
This brings me to my last point. Teachers, the School Board, administrators and parents want kids to succeed in school, which would allow them to succeed in life. But when they push it too far, they begin to cross the line between helping the kids succeed in school, and pushing them to the point at which stress becomes visible and begins to affect them in negative ways. Standardized testing and school tests are the same. They test students on what they have learned and how far they have come. So why not just have one or the other, or make the test have a lesser impact on grades and what types of classes they can take? The teachers would have an easier time grading everything and the School Board and administrators would still be able to see how far students have progressed. It would make everything easier and students would be able to lose some of the stress they carry with them.
Recently in health, we learned about different anger styles, and how everybody has different types of anger. Some people choose to hold all their emotions inside; some choose to let everything out; and some choose to problem solve. On the journal page I had to turn in for health, I wrote down where people may get their anger style and one of my answers was from the people they are mostly with, their families. But I have a different answer to that question. I believe it is emotions mixed with stress that gives you the anger styles you have. That mixture takes over your brain and you don’t get to choose the anger style you have. It just comes to you from inside. We once again come back to how stress affects students. But had there been fewer tests, there could have been less stress, causing less anger.
Parents always want what is best for their students, and so do teachers, so I only have one question, “Why are you adding to the stress, when you should be the ones to eliminate it?”
Leah Luzhansky is a student in Eden Prairie.